THE HALF BLOOD'S CURSE

Training began at midnight.

I was dragged from my cell by two of Niklas's Germans-a man and a woman with the same cold efficiency as their leader. They didn't speak to me. They didn't look at me. They just grabbed my arms and marched me through the labyrinthine corridors of the Council's stronghold until we reached a door I hadn't seen before.

It opened onto a forest.

Not a courtyard. Not a training ground. An actual forest, with trees that stretched toward a moonlit sky and soil that smelled of rain and decay. I blinked, disoriented.

"How is this possible? We're under the city."

"The Council's architects were clever," a voice said from the shadows.

Niklas stepped out from between two pines. He was wearing nothing but a pair of loose pants, his chest bare and gleaming with sweat. The moonlight caught the lines of his muscles, the ridges of his scars, the way his skin moved over bone and sinew like water over stone.

I looked away. Too late. The wolf had already seen.

Beautiful, it whispered.

Shut up, I told it.

"Where are the others?" I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on a point just above his left shoulder.

"There are no others." Niklas walked toward me, slow and deliberate. "Your training is with me. Alone."

"Why?"

"Because you're dangerous. Because you don't know how to control what's inside you. And because I don't trust anyone else to put you down if you lose control."

He stopped in front of me. Close enough that I could feel the heat rising off his skin.

"Shift," he said.

"What?"

"Shift. Fully. Now."

"I can't shift fully on command. It doesn't work that way."

"Then you'll learn." His voice was flat, uncompromising. "Shift, Elif. Or I'll make you."

The wolf stirred. Not with fear. With anger.

"Try it," I said.

Niklas's eyes flashed. In the moonlight, they looked almost silver.

He moved so fast I didn't see it. One second he was standing in front of me; the next, he had my throat in his hand and my back against a tree. His grip was tight-not enough to choke, but enough to warn.

"I don't have time for your defiance," he said quietly. "The second trial is in three days. If you fail, you belong to the Council. And the Council will use you until there's nothing left. Do you understand?"

I couldn't nod. His hand was too tight. But I understood.

"Good." He let go and stepped back. "Now shift."

I didn't shift.

Not fully. But something happened. The wolf came forward-not all the way, but enough. My eyes changed. My teeth sharpened. My fingernails darkened into claws.

Niklas watched me with an unreadable expression.

"Better," he said. "Now hold it."

"How?"

"Control your breathing. The shift is tied to your emotions. If you're angry, the wolf rises. If you're scared, the wolf hides. You need to find the middle ground."

"And how do I do that?"

"Think of something that makes you calm."

I thought of the Black Sea. The waves crashing against the rocks below my mother's house. The salt wind in my hair. The feeling of running along the cliff's edge, free and wild and alive.

The wolf settled.

My claws retracted. My teeth shrank. My eyes faded back to brown.

"Good," Niklas said again. There was something different in his voice now. Something that might have been respect. "Again."

We trained until dawn.

Shift. Hold. Release. Shift. Hold. Release. Over and over, until my muscles screamed and my mind blurred with exhaustion. Niklas was relentless. Every time I faltered, he was there-correcting my stance, adjusting my arms, touching me.

And every time he touched me, fire raced through my veins.

I tried to ignore it. I tried to tell myself it was just adrenaline, just the heat of training, just anything other than what it was.

But the wolf knew.

Mate, it said.

No, I argued.

Mate, it insisted.

"Focus."

Niklas's voice cut through my thoughts. He was standing behind me, his hands on my shoulders, positioning my body for a defensive stance. His chest was pressed against my back. I could feel his heartbeat.

"You're trembling," he said.

"I'm cold."

"No, you're not."

He was right. I wasn't cold. I was burning.

He stepped back abruptly, putting distance between us. "That's enough for tonight. Tomorrow, we work on speed."

He walked away without looking back.

That night, there was a fire.

I don't know who built it. Maybe the Germans. Maybe the Council. But when I emerged from my cell to find something to eat, I saw Niklas sitting alone in the courtyard, staring into the flames.

I should have walked away.

I didn't.

"Mind if I sit?" I asked.

He didn't answer. I sat anyway.

The fire crackled between us. For a long time, neither of us spoke. The sounds of the stronghold-distant voices, footsteps, the clink of metal-faded into the background.

"Why are you really here?" Niklas asked finally.

"You kidnapped me. Remember?"

"Not what I meant." He looked at me. In the firelight, his eyes looked almost warm. "Why are you sitting here? Next to me?"

"Because you look like you need company."

He laughed. It was a bitter sound. "I don't need anything."

"Everyone needs something."

"Not me." He picked up a stick and stabbed at the embers. "I learned a long time ago that needing things is a weakness."

"What happened?"

He was quiet for so long I thought he wouldn't answer.

"My wife," he said at last. "Her name was Liesel."

I froze. "You're married?"

"Was. She's dead." His voice was flat, empty. "Killed three years ago. By a half-blood."

The fire seemed to dim.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"Don't be. She was everything to me. And the half-blood who killed her didn't just take her life. He took my ability to trust. To feel. To need."

"Is that why you hate me?"

Niklas looked at me. Really looked at me. "I don't hate you, Elif. I hate what you represent. A reminder that the thing I loved most was destroyed by something like you."

"I'm not like him."

"Aren't you? You have the same blood. The same instincts. The same hunger."

I reached out to touch his arm. Just to comfort him. Just to let him know that not all half-bloods were monsters.

He flinched away.

"Don't," he said. "Don't touch me. Don't pity me. I don't deserve it."

"You deserve to be loved."

His laugh was hollow. "Love is for people who haven't lost everything."

He stood up and walked into the darkness, leaving me alone by the fire.

I fell asleep in my cell with his words echoing in my head.

Love is for people who haven't lost everything.

The dream came without warning.

I was standing in a forest-not the training forest, but somewhere older, darker. The trees were black and twisted, their branches reaching toward a sky that had no stars.

And in the center of the clearing stood my father.

He was covered in blood.

"Baba?" I ran toward him, but no matter how fast I moved, I couldn't get closer. "Baba, what happened?"

"The relic," he said. His voice was thin, distant, like an echo from the bottom of a well. "Don't let them find it, Elif. Promise me."

"I don't even know where it is!"

"You will. And when you do..." He looked at me with eyes that were hollow and scared. "Don't win. Whatever you do, don't win."

"What? Why?"

"Because winning makes you one of them. And once you're one of them..." His body began to dissolve, pieces of him falling away like ash. "Once you're one of them, you become a monster."

"Baba!"

"Promise me!"

"BABA!"

I woke up screaming.

The walls of my cell were the same. The cot was the same. The torch flickered in its bracket, casting shadows that danced like ghosts.

But I wasn't alone.

Niklas stood in the doorway.

He was still shirtless. His hair was disheveled, like he had just woken up. And his eyes-those storm-gray eyes-were fixed on me with an intensity that made my breath catch.

"You heard me screaming?" I asked, my voice shaking.

"I heard more than screaming." He stepped into the cell, and the door closed behind him. "I heard him."

"Who?"

"Your father."

I stared at him. "You heard my father?"

Niklas knelt beside my cot. Close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his gray eyes, the slight curve of his lips, the tension in his jaw.

"That wasn't a dream, Elif," he said quietly. "That was a call. Your father is trying to reach you from beyond the grave. And if he's telling you not to win..."

"He's trying to protect me."

"Or he's trying to protect the relic." Niklas reached out and touched my cheek-just a brush of his fingers, barely there. "Either way, you need to be careful. Dreams like that can kill you."

"How do you know?"

His hand dropped. For a moment, something flickered across his face. Pain. Grief. Regret.

"Because I had them too," he said. "After Liesel died. Every night for a year. And they almost drove me mad."

"Why are you telling me this?"

Niklas stood up. He looked down at me, and in the dim torchlight, he looked almost human. Almost kind.

"Because you're not my enemy, Elif. I wanted you to be. I tried to make you my enemy. But you're not." He walked toward the door. "Get some sleep. Tomorrow, we train harder."

He opened the door.

"Niklas."

He stopped.

"Thank you," I said. "For not letting me scream alone."

He didn't turn around. But I saw his shoulders relax, just a fraction.

"Don't thank me yet," he said. "The worst is still to come."

The door closed behind him.

I lay back on my cot, my heart pounding, and stared at the ceiling.

The wolf inside me was quiet now. Not sleeping. Waiting.

And somewhere in the darkness, I could have sworn I heard my father's voice one more time.

Don't trust him, kızım. Don't trust any of them.

But it was too late for that.

I already did.